Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 35. (1982)
SAPPER, Christian: Die Zahlamtsbücher im Hofkammerarchiv (1542–1825)
518 Literaturberichte native Palatinate, but returned to court in time to benefit from his former pupil’s succession. Appointed bishop of Vienna in 1706, Rummel actually outlived Joseph, dying in 1716 after a relatively uneventful and undistinguished decade in that position. The author has consulted a number of archives, including the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, and the Rummel family archive at Waldau. He has also read virtually all of the relevant published material (though not this reviewer’s biography of Joseph, which had appeared only 18 months earlier). To his credit he has uncovered some new facts and corrected some erroneous notions about his subject. He establishes, for example, that Rummel was appointed Joseph’s tutor nearly two years before Prince Salm became the young archduke’s Obersthofmeister and, therefore, could not have been Salm’s creature. He also more clearly defines the decisive role of Rummel’s real patron, Fra Hippolito da Pergine, both in his ordination and in his and Salm’s appointment to Joseph’s court. Unfortunately, the archival sources that Rummel has consulted have not enabled him to shed light on more profound questions and issues. He is unable to give us much feel for his subject’s character or even for his reactions to critical events and situations. The author is himself aware of these shortcomings when he confesses that it is impossible to ascertain Franz Ferdinand’s stance toward the new enlightenment ideas being introduced at court by Joseph’s lieutenants. He is also unable to shed new light on Joseph’s numerous escapades or on Rummel’s reactions to them even though other observers such as Salm, Wratislaw, Lamberg, and several foreign diplomats were far more willing to report and reflect upon them in their correspondence. The author compensates for such gaps by reproducing at considerable length the material that he has been able to find on subjects ranging from a valuable look at Joseph’s curriculum to less worthwhile information on court ceremonial or the byzantine intrigues surrounding Rummel’s appointment to Tinna. He also goes to some lengths in restaging the well-known events of the reign, often at the cost of submerging Rummel beneath a mass of otherwise unrelated narration. Such are the risks, of course, in writing biography in this period; yet the author would have uncovered at least some more valuable material on Rummel had be consulted the Salm family archive or other major “Bestände” in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, such as the Dispacci di Germania of the Venetian ambassadors. Perhaps less defensible is the author’s failure to evaluate much of the data that he has found on his ancestor. All too often he is satisfied to quote lengthy passages without offering any elaboration or interpretation. As a result the reader finds the narration jumping in episodic fashion from one set of documents to another in a text bereft of a central theme, or even a well- defined central figure. Indeed, Rummel emerges from this study as an insignificant player at Joseph’s court to whom things are done or otherwise happen, a man with little control over events in his career and no influence whatever within the government; the author is, in fact, understating the case when he admits that Rummel was no „Gray Eminence“ (p. 95). The author concludes the book with Rummel’s death and burial in the catacombs beneath St. Stephen’s cathedral. He reports that the exact where-
